


1008 Days of Silence

by owlsshadows



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Filling Oikawa's Shoes is Hard, IN SPACE!, M/M, Slow Burn, With A Twist, captain Yahaba
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23091763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlsshadows/pseuds/owlsshadows
Summary: Shigeru looks at the stars out there, way too familiar for a crook of unexplored space. The constellations he named while he was bored glare back at him with their cruel silence, offering no consolation to his impending situation.A hand on the glass, fingers gliding down the surface willing to tear into it but unable to do so – futile, like everything he tried ever since he took over the role of captain from Oikawa.“Do you ever feel lonely, Kyoutani?” the words slip from his tongue, wistful.“Define lonely,” the AI replies.In which Yahaba Shigeru takes over the role of captain from Oikawa Tooru and realizes that filling Oikawa's shoes is hard. But in SPACE.
Relationships: Kyoutani Kentarou & Yahaba Shigeru, Oikawa Tooru/Yahaba Shigeru
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	1008 Days of Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Oisuga server's rare pair space zine project, Starstruck! I collab-ed with Charris who drew a really pretty scene with Yahaba and Oikawa :3
> 
> The zine can be found [ here](https://owlsshadows.tumblr.com/post/612136092835184640/starstruckzinepdf)

It is the clear mechanic echo of his own pulse that awakens Shigeru. Machines beep and whirr around him, but it all comes as an afterthought; as if there was some barrier between him and reality. The air feels crisp around Shigeru. Cold, sterile, strange. The smell of it, so full of chemicals.

He tries to move his fingers, but he feels no response; his limbs feel numb as if he was to waken from a thousand-year sleep.

 _“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,”_ someone calls, but it is still part of a dream, Shigeru realizes; part of a dream much dreaded, but just as much yearned for.

Something sizzles above him, and the air comes alive – it swirls around him free, warmer, fresher.

He takes a deep breath, trying his fingers again. He moves them one by one, from pinky to thumb and back. His feeling comes back to him slowly, as an absent-minded dog to its owner on a long walk.

Blinking into the light filling the room, the boring white ceiling looks back down at him. The speakers, neat little things built into the corner where the ceiling meets the walls, light up with the teal of Seijou as they come to life.

"Good morning, Yahaba Shigeru," he hears from the intercom.

Shigeru sits up in the cryo pod. As an aftermath of the cryostasis, his body feels like a different entity; it moves slow, square, rigid. While his muscles do follow the orders of his brain, the execution is somewhat barbed, causing his elbow to bump into the side of the pod. As he reaches out to massage the pain away, his skin feels cold under his fingers. He feels a slight burning feeling, too, as his body warms up to the room’s temperature.

He cracks his neck and shoulders, twists his wrists, rolls his feet around. His ear he sharpens to the speakers, the white noise coming from the intercom telling him that the message is not over yet; the possibility, however, that it is not a simple good morning call, is high.

His instinct, as usual, is right – his eyes dart out towards the speaker just as it comes to life once again.

"This is Captain Oikawa Tooru speaking. Emergency Protocol 6.1 has been initiated. Report to the bridge as soon as possible."

"Yes...sir," Shigeru croaks his reply, voice unstable and tongue numb. The taste in his mouth is dry, cold, bland. It is actually agreeable, at least compared to Shigeru's usual nasty morning breath.

He glances around, his room glowing in a soft mint light. He recognizes his desk, his wardrobe, his chair, and the jacket he had haphazardly thrown over it who knows how many years ago before jumping in his sleeping pod.

Everything is the same as he left it.

He stands, legs wobbly under him as he reaches for his jacket, limbs cold and uncooperative despite his impromptu exercises. He walks to the door. His brain still legs behind, like a marathon runner left outside the sun after a big race. It takes him a few seconds to realize that the door needs his retina scanned to open, another few to figure out which way the bridge is.

Staggering, reaching for the support of the corridor walls, he walks, his mind searching his memories for answers.

_Emergency Protocol 6.1._

What was it?

He crosses the dining hall, big and empty and so really useless when all of the ship’s crew is asleep but for the captain; and it’s in these sleep-waft moments that Shigeru thinks about how things can be necessary and unnecessary at the same time; when all of them are awake, there is no social life without the dining hall, but when all are asleep…

His brain clicks, memory after memory resurfacing.

They are all asleep for a reason.

Because of Emergency Protocol 6.1.

  * _When destination time is not within the predictable spectrum, everyone but the captain is to be asleep._


  * The captain is to stay behind to safeguard the ship in case of any unforeseen problems.


  * If the captain is injured or otherwise unable to sustain his duties, he is to awaken his second-in-command.


  * If the situation does not change for 3 years, the captain is to be replaced by his second-in-command.


  * Once he takes up his new role, the vice-captain is to select his own replacement for the next 3 years period with immediate effect.



Shigeru stops by the door to the bridge, taking a deep breath. He recalls it now – how they all went asleep and why, and how Oikawa has stayed behind, waving goodbye to them all with that ostentatious, carefree smile of his.

Shigeru finds nothing hateful about captain Oikawa Tooru; his sharp mind, his piloting sense, his leadership skills, and charisma are all way above average - yet, Shigeru does not quite like him. Admiration is what he feels, and envy for Oikawa’s skill and talent and relentless will to get better. But as for his personality, Shigeru does not think highly of his captain; he finds his theatrical gestures, self-centered behavior and obvious vanity to make Oikawa a somewhat sketchy figure; paired with his worthless pride and headstrong persistence he is arrogant and annoying on good days – outright insufferable on worse. Most of it Shigeru does not consider to be captainly qualities. Some days he wishes he did not sign with Seijou – but oh, Oikawa’s charisma makes his speeches way too persuasive; he seems such a loyal, confident and good leader, listening to him made Shigeru want to join Seijou. Some days, Shigeru feels that he fell for a recruiting scam. Originally, he chose Seijou because of Oikawa. And Oikawa, while being a great captain, is not whom Shigeru expected him to be.

In the split second the door opens before him, Shiheru’s thoughts return to Emergency Protocol 6.1. He ponders over the reason he has been awakened. Was it because Oikawa became somehow unfit for duty? Alternatively, have three years passed already?

He does not want anything bad to happen to his captain – yet, as the door to the bridge opens, revealing a seemingly fit and healthy Oikawa Tooru – Shigeru kind of wishes Oikawa was injured. Because if three years have passed and Oikawa Tooru did not find a solution to their current predicament–

“Yahaba,” Oikawa greets him, face pulling into his trademark smile, the one that gives Shigeru the worst of itches.

Shigeru scans his captain carefully, running his eyes from the painfully perfect face to the bright and clean white uniform, the leisurely, straight posture, the effortless elegance his captain radiates. He finds no apparent signs of injury – however, the wrinkle in the corner of Oikawa’s lips as he smiles and the crow’s feet around the outer edge of his brown eyes are a more than telltale sign:

Oikawa has aged.

“Yahaba Shigeru, reporting for service, sir!” Shigeru replies, lifting his hand to his temple in salute. His arm is still quite numb, and the movement sends burns and prickles down his skin, as if he has been punctured by thousands of needles.

“You were fast,” Oikawa says.

“You said as soon as possible, sir.”

“You can drop the formalities, Yahaba. There’s no one else but us here. No one to judge,” Oikawa’s smile is followed by a wink that Shigeru cannot interpret as anything but patronizing. He grimaces back, his facial muscles still half-asleep, and he hopes for it to look like a convincing smile.

“How long since I have been asleep, si– how long have I been asleep for?” he asks.

“Kyoutani,” Oikawa calls, and there’s a small mechanical sound as the speakers turn on.

“Yahaba Shigeru, in cryosleep for 1096 days.”

“In years?” Shigeru asks. “I’m a bit too sluggish for mathematics now.”

“Three years, one day,” the AI replies.

“See how punctual I can be,” Oikawa says then, a small, almost innocent smile appearing and vanishing from his face almost immediately.

Shigeru’s stomach churns.

“Are we still in the space pocket?” he asks.

“Hn,” Oikawa replies, fiddling with the main consoles. 

In a few, a segment of space appears between them. Lights go out on the bridge to reveal the three-dimensional darkness, littered with smaller and bigger shining objects. Shigeru’s eyes are drawn to a big star dominating the right side of the map, with a small, mint-colored dot blinking nearby. 

“This is our current location. And this,” Oikawa pulls a line across the map, starting from the spaceship to a bigger, pulsing silhouette of a space station to the left, “is our planned route to the National Space Station. Now, somewhere here,” he continues, drawing a line vertical to their path, “is where we enter the loop. And here,” he pulls his finger across, connecting the line to a point somewhere behind their spaceship, “is where space spits us out.”

The map corrects his wobbly mark into a full circle, pulsing purple against the darkness of the surrounding space.

Shigeru steps closer, swatting away at stars blinding his vision. He turns and folds the map, inspecting it from different angles. The one large star that drew his attention in the very beginning pulses right in the middle of the circle. It is impossible to mistake it. The ‘Young Cow’ they call it, a ferocious, powerful young giant star, dominating this part of the galaxy. The surrounding litter of smaller stars and space dust emits a unique purple light scientists have yet to identify.

“The Shiratorizawa mist,” Shigeru says finally.

“Yes.”

“How long between this and this?” Shigeru points at the beginning and the endpoint of the circle. The computer lights up his selection with a warmer, bolder shade of purple.

“Forty-two days exactly,” Oikawa replies. “The problem is; we don’t know why or when it happens. I had Kyouken-chan run some analytics, but it all turned out to be useless.”

“I see.”

“I would be happier if I could hand over the reins of Seijou under better conditions myself,” Oikawa says, another of his so-not-happy smiles crossing his face. “But I’m afraid it is beyond my abilities.”

“How do we do… on terms of energy and food?” Shigeru asks, careful. As Oikawa’s eyes fall on him, he finds them dull, their usual playfulness nowhere to be found. It sends an uneasy chill down his spine.

“Somehow, the energy is restored to full every time we exit the loop on the starting end,” Oikawa says, tapping at one of the marked points in space. “Our food, however, does not. I also assume that time is passing, and not only for the ship, as the meteorite field between these two stars seems to change its construction with every loop. This is the most dangerous part of the space pocket, too, I want you to be extra careful when navigating the ship across. For the rest of your time… try to enjoy your time on the ship. Watch some recordings. And find a solution.”

“Do you think it’s feasible?” Shigeru feels tempted to ask, and the words fall from his lips before he can control himself.

“I do,” Oikawa replies. “If not today, then tomorrow. Or the week after. Or next year. We will get out of here.”

Shigeru wonders, why Oikawa has avoided to answer the question of food in detail. He does not ask. He puts, however, a command through the computer in his bracelet to the AI, to provide him with the full list of provisions they have left.

When Kyoutani returns with the numbers Shigeru understands Oikawa’s silence at once. They had planned for a 200-day trip for all twenty of them. That meant 4500 provisions on board at lift-off.

They spent a good hundred days awake. All of them. And Oikawa, though he never ate more than his own portions – rather, from the numbers Yahaba deducts, he even missed few of his meals over time – has spent the last three years awake.

The numbers paint a dire situation in front of Shigeru; one that he would fancy passing onto someone more trained or experienced on any other day.

They have food barely enough for Shigeru to carry on alone for the next three years.

“We will get out of here,” he repeats after Oikawa, more like a mantra to himself than to anyone else.

There are others on this ship who could do better; who have more experience, who have done training specialized for space emergencies; they have Hanamaki the evacuation specialist, or Matsukawa, a senior officer stationed on Seijou originally as oversight and change management officer. Even the head engineer, Iwaizumi, might be more fitting for this role; compared to Shigeru, and his measly five years aboard this ship, three of them he spent sleeping…

His eyes meet Oikawa’s, and the rapidly building panic gets washed away, his heart falling back to a steady rhythm.

That, for one, is something Shigeru envies in Oikawa. The power of non-verbal communication – how he can convey a message with a simple glance, and give reassurance with one of his rare, honest smiles.

His captain takes a thoughtful glance to his wrist, then back to his face. There is no sign of his usual attitude and flamboyance left in the sad, knowing smile he flashes now.

“You have my trust, Yahaba.”

*

Shigeru feels the weight of his feet as he accompanies his captain back to his room. Oikawa chats all along the way, idly, as if their situation was nothing extraordinary. As if being stuck in space aimlessly was something that could happen to them every day. As if he left all his honesty back on the bridge, and once out in the corridors, only the clown, the social butterfly, the casanova remained.

Shigeru does his best to reply – but the itch, that terrible itch that he always gets when Oikawa flashes that unreadable smile of his returns. This smile is for an audience, not a friend or a trusted vice-captain; and Shigeru feels as if Oikawa lied in his face.

As they enter Oikawa’s room, Shigeru’s curiosity conquers his fears, and he darts an inspecting glance around. He has no memory of ever coming here; his captain keeping a surprisingly low profile in terms of his personal life contrary to his flamboyant personality, his room has always been off-limits, though, at the same time he himself did not spend too much time there, staying up until ungodly hours and often falling sleeping in some twisted position in his chair on the bridge.

If Shigeru had any expectations, it would have been something fluffy but slightly compromising, like a feather boa thrown over an open closet door – and definitely an overwhelming amount of mirrors. He almost feels cheated when, upon entering the room, he sees the same puritan style furniture as his own without any decoration but a small alien sticker plastered over the headboard of Oikawa’s bed. No mirrors either, apart from the one he can see in the connecting bathroom through an open door, and also no heaps of beauty products.

A puny, petty part of his conscience curses Oikawa for his seemingly natural perfectness. If only a face mask was in sight somewhere, but not even a comb was visible anywhere.

Shigeru’s nerves tie a knot in his stomach as he watches Oikawa opening up a panel in his wall, summoning his cryo pod. The knot twists and squeezes his insides as Oikawa unceremoniously lays down in his pod.

The knot demands a speech. Some form of goodbye. Some sort of physical contact before Oikawa Tooru, captain of the Seijou flagship, enters his icy cold sleep. The knot in his stomach makes Shigeru nauseous just as much as greedy. He wishes for more. Small talk, even, sounds better than letting Oikawa into cryostasis, leaving all the responsibility of captaining a ship on Shigeru’s shoulders.

Oikawa, oblivious to Shigeru’s hopes, hands him the timer.

“Wake me up once everything’s over,” he says.

Their fingers touch for a fleeting moment, and the next, a thick acryl wall separates them from each other.

“I will,” Shigeru breathes, soundless, pressing the timer and setting the freezing in motion.

Oikawa sends one last smile to him – one of the worst kind, one that is just entirely cryptic, as if he studied the Mona Lisa for so long its smile has been stuck on his face too – and then the pod fills up with sleeping gas.

Shigeru watches as Oikawa closes his eyes, then lifts his gaze to the pod’s screen. He examines his captain’s stats with the same attentiveness with which he had been looking through countless maps before they all decided on implementing Emergency Protocol 6.1. He had been looking for a solution to this problem. He did not find it – and neither did Oikawa.

Fear, dark and murky, settles in the pit of Shigeru’s stomach. He leans closer to the screen, nose pressed against the cold acryl glass. It fogs up quick, even though he feels that his breath is still somewhat cold from his own three years long sleep. It feels forever until the small green light on the screen signals the success of the process – a forever to be filled with uncertainty and emptiness, to whisper worst-case scenarios in Shigeru’s ears, making his fingers tremble over the acryl of the pod.

When the light flashes up, Shigeru’s eyes fall back on his captain, face marbleized in his icy sleep. The edge of Oikawa’s lips still curves upwards, his smile as cryptic as ever.

Shigeru finds the feature just as hateful as he finds it calming – somewhat of an anchor in the panic of his heart.

Oikawa Tooru – he was the best captain Shigeru has ever had, yet the most irritating one as well. One whose talents have never quite managed to hide his eccentrics, whose leadership style was sometimes unfathomable, seemed cruel even; everything, however, what Shigeru knew of him, was probably a façade. Just as his room countered Shigeru’s expectations, maybe the man himself is different from what he lets others believe, too.

Shigeru could never read his captain’s smile – but the sadness in his eyes on the bridge before they departed for the pod… it was real. It finally reached Shigeru. It was something honest, something that made him determined, if not calming his panic, even.

He stands from the pod, sending one last glance to his captain’s sleeping face. Purpose folds his hands in fists.

If Shigeru is to be the captain of the ship for the next three years, he better be prepared.

Filling Oikawa’s shoes is tough.

*

The second he leaves Oikawa’s room, Kyoutani’s voice comes through the intercom.

“Captain Yahaba,” he says.

“Yes?”

“Please assign your vice-captain.”

“Do I have to do it now? Can’t it wait?” he asks.

“As per Protocol 6.1…”

“Yeah, alright. I assign my assistant, Watari.”

“Watari Shinji is a defense associate,” Kyoutani replies. Somehow, his lack of intonation makes everything he says sound unimpressed. “And as such, he is not advisable to be selected as captain.”

“Why?” Shigeru asks.

“As per the General Staff Rule 123 of Space…”

“No no no, I know the rules, thank you Kyoutani,” he puts a stop to the AI’s speech. “But if you insist on me assigning a vice-captain immediately, reasoning with Protocol 6.1, you must also understand that this very protocol overwrites anything you just wanted to cite.”

There is a short silence, the AI contemplating his reasons, and Shigeru feels suddenly quite dumb, standing just outside his captain’s room in the corridor, all alone.

“In a state of emergency, general staff rules restricting appointments and promotions do not apply,” he says eyeing the speakers, built-in sleekly into the ribs of the corridor walls.

He has never had a disagreement with the AI before. Working on the bridge, he was not in a position to make decisions on his own; all he did was following orders, using Kyoutani for reports and additional information if needed. Shigeru knows, however, that the AI, just as its creator Iwaizumi, is a headstrong entity. He has witnessed it refusing Oikawa’s orders a few times before; in most cases, it saved them time and energy. In one, it cost them some spent fuel. If not for Oikawa’s swift thinking, it may have cost even more.

Hence, Shigeru readies himself for a battle of logic, collects reasons to support his decision – of how Watari’s composure and past experience on the bridge make him the best candidate for the position – but it all proves needless, the AI accepting his decision.

“Very well,” Shigeru hears the mechanical voice from a single speaker right above his shoulder. “Watari Shinji has been marked as vice-captain.”

He shrugs a little, continuing his walk back to his own room.

He knows Watari from their cadet days a long way back; when they both aimed to be the top of their class with the goal to captain a ship in Seijou’s main flotilla one day – Watari opted for defense mechanisms only after Shigeru left him behind; and even then, he stuck around as one of Shigeru’s closest friends.

Watari is a good kid. A bright kid. One with a promising future ahead of him. To burden him with the role of vice-captain…

If only the AI did not rush him to make a decision; he may have appointed Hanamaki. His experience as an evacuation specialist could give them an advantage against the space pocket – even if the specialist had no ideas back when they all decided on activating the emergency protocol.

“Oy, Kyoutani?” Shigeru stops before the door of his own quarters.

“Yes?”

“Can I… change my mind?”

“You can re-assign the role to anyone at any point in time,” the AI replies. Shigeru’s hand wavers above the knob, a question popping into his mind instantly.

Did Oikawa ever try to make changes in the person of his replacement?

The question numbs him a little, a cold different from that of the cryostasis creeping up his spine.

“Would you like to make any changes to your decision?” Kyoutani asks.

“No,” Shigeru says. “Thanks. This is all.”

*

Closing the door of his room behind him makes Shigeru feel secure as if the four walls of his room could keep out reality and save him from the burden resting on his shoulders. For a second out there in the corridor, he felt as if the AI was judging him and his choices.

It is a thought that frightens him. It has never really registered with him before, but he is the captain now. His decisions may cost his crew their lives. Oikawa has been doing this all along. Even when the entire crew was awake and there to judge.

Shigeru feels the sudden chill return, shaking him to the bones. He throws his jacket over the chair beside his desk, marching straight to the bathroom. The bathrooms are quite luxurious in the rooms of officers, and the child in him has never ceased to be amazed by the size of the bathtub he got in his room. Right now, however, he has no patience to pour a bath; he needs instant warmth before his world could collapse entirely around him.

He sheds his clothes as if they were acidic, burning his skin. He jumps into the fancy shower cabin quickly; he only feels a tinge of guilt as the cabin door shudders behind him with the force he slammed it close. He opens the tap, grateful for the warmth filling the air immediately.

Shigeru stands under the shower, hot water washing over his pained muscles, warming up his joints just as much as calming his strained nerves.

The situation Oikawa painted in front of him, if he were to be entirely honest with himself, seems hopeless. The space pocket is invisible and intangible; they searched for its source to no avail. But Shigeru is not to give up just like that.

Not when Oikawa said he trusts him, even if he probably did not mean it, even if he only said it out of his constant need to be as theatrical as possible. He seemed honest for once, and Shigeru finds it more than enough to motivate him at the moment.

The lives of the crew, his friends, his colleagues, his subordinates, and his captain – all of it now is in his hands.

And Shigeru is not willing to give up just yet.

Not until he has exhausted all his ideas and resources; not until the very last of his wits will have left him.

He can be frightened – he has every right to be so. But it never meant that he should give up. And even if reality seems like some weird nightmare now, even if it seems that space, the place he has strived so hard to be in for, is spitting him right between the eyes – Yahaba Shigeru is now the captain-in-charge of a Seijou flagship.

What better adversary could he get, than the big black empty mass?

He sneezes when a bubble of his shampoo penetrates his nostrils.

He chuckles, because he has no better option – and because he would rather smile than go into battle crying.

*

After the shower Shigeru feels refreshed and motivated, donning his uniform and walking back on the bridge with renewed energy.

“Kyoutani!” he calls.

“Captain Yahaba?” the AI responds.

“Run a detailed analysis of all systems. I need to have all data that you can find on the ship,” Shigeru says. “I want to know what we have, facing our predicament.”

“Running simulations,” Kyoutani replies. “Predicted time: 15 minutes.”

“Great,” Shigeru nods. He settles in the captain’s chair for the first time in his life – not counting that one time over New Year’s, when everyone got a bit drunk and things got a little out of hand – and a shudder of excitement runs through his body.

“Would you like to play a game in the meantime?” Kyoutani asks.

“A game?”

“Captain Oikawa said that all the time spent waiting could be useful if we played a game in the meantime.”

“That sounds… uncharacteristic, to be honest,” Shigeru says.

Oikawa Tooru, the hard-working, maniac of a man Oikawa Tooru just does not seem to be the type to play games. His immense patience, focus, and determination, something Shigeru could only wish to have, simply seems to be clashing with the image of him playing games while waiting for test results.

His playful and cheery persona, the one Shigeru often finds tacky, is for the dinners they spend together. Never for the bridge. Never for serious decision making.

“Would you like to see the games and records Oikawa Tooru upholds?” Kyoutani asks. “You might find some inspiration for yourself.”

“Uh. Why not?” Shigeru replies, distraught.

Kyoutani flashes up a screen in thin air, and a list of the bubbliest, most annoying kids’ games appears on it. There are only a few Shigeru has played before – a mathematical one, and the one with the labyrinths, he found quite entertaining. He snorts, looking at Oikawa’s high score in that one. For the amount of time Oikawa spent with the game, he is still on Level 5, with more than seventeen hours spent on Level 4.

“Oikawa-san, are you bad with shapes?” he asks, scrolling the list musingly.

“Yes,” comes Kyoutani’s voice from the intercom.

“This was a rhetorical question, but thanks for answering,” Shigeru chuckles.

“If you allow me to correct my answer,” Kyoutani’s voice rumbles from the speakers, “according to my observations, he is excellent with maps. He is just terrible with imagining and predicting shapes and find connections in a 3D layout. That game, in particular, gave him quite some headache.”

“He still played it over a hundred hours,” Yahaba muses. “And this one? What is ‘Magic 8Ball’? I’ve never seen this one.”

“’Magic 8Ball’ is a game that answers questions you ask it. Based on my experience, the game replies to all questions randomly, regardless whether the answer makes any sense or not, out of the twenty pre-written replies. It is a very primitive game.”

“And Oikawa-san enjoyed playing with this while waiting for things?”

“Yes. Captain Oikawa enjoyed it immensely.”

“What kind of questions did he ask?” comes the sudden curiosity.

Kyoutani stays quiet for a while. Then, digging up from the game’s memory, he presents Shigeru with a lengthy list that spans across the screen immediately.

“The questions were recorded by the voice recognition of the game, so they may be incorrect,” Kyoutani comments. “I have some recordings of Captain Oikawa playing the game from his captain logs if you are further interested.”

Shigeru scans one column of questions, flinching at the frequent repetition of “Who is the most handsome man on this ship?”

“No, thanks, this is enough,” he replies. “Time?”

“Analysis in three minutes.”

“Give me… one of those mathematic formulas then.”

*

“Captain’s log, Yahaba Shigeru, Day 1,” Shigeru dictates, leaning back in his chair on the bridge. “The ship is fully functional. Food supplies down to one-fourth of the initial. Direction: National Space Station, within reach: 50 days.”

“I think that is not entirely true,” Kyoutani says.

“If not for the Shiratorizawa mist, we would’ve reached it many times already,” Shigeru argues.

“But the mist is there,” the AI points out.

“And we will overcome it.”

***

Day 2 sees Shigeru running up and down the ship, checking in-person the data he has received from the AI. He looks through the supplies, checks the cables, runs analytics on the systems outside the AI’s scope.

It is silent on the ship. Way too silent.

Back in the day, which seems just like yesterday really for someone who spent the last three years sleeping, the corridors were filled with life. Before the first loophole jump the ship made, Shigeru would meet numerous of his crew members walking down to the engines. He would see Watari without doubt, sitting by the monitors over the main shields. He would find officers Hanamaki and Matsukawa in the hangout room, playing some kind of tabletop game against one another. He would surely bump into officer Yuda running in the corridors – life with him in the picture always seemed somewhat hectic.

Shigeru walks across the hangar which has never felt so big before. Without the crew to run up and down or to simply hang out chatting casually, each of Shigeru’s steps cast a hollow echo across the place. He checks on each and every escape pod for oxygen, water, and food supplies. He tries out their shielding and measures their battery lives.

On an average day, Chief Engineering Officer Iwaizumi would stop him in his actions, grumbling about how no one but him can do decent work with machines on this ship.

He would find Kindaichi around the weaponry, running endless simulations on the laser beams in fear that they will run into a meteorite field.

Their surprisingly silent communications associate, Kunimi, would greet him with a simple bow from beside Oikawa on the bridge.

“Kyoutani,” Shigeru says, sitting down in the chair that is usually occupied by Oikawa, feeling awkward but somewhat proud at the same time.

“Yes?”

“Play some music for me.”

***

By Day 10, Shigeru grows to hate the chill jazzy sounds the AI has to offer – it just makes him feel as if he was in the lobby of a fancy hotel, or worse, in an elevator for hours. He transfers some of his own music from his work computer to the central system and lets Kyoutani shuffle them randomly.

Work falls into a steady pace; a schedule forming naturally with each day spent on the ship.

Shigeru spends his mornings on the bridge, analyzing the reports received back from the several sensors of the ship overnight. He eats his meal on the go, descending from the bridge to the hangars and the engine room, inspecting all machinery and functions. In the evenings, he retreats to his room, opening a book or movie from the ship’s library he has never read or watched before. Sometimes he regrets his choice. Most nights, however, it is these stories that keep him sane.

***

On Day 39, he experiences his first loop jump since his awakening. He pushes all sensors of the ship to maximum sensitivity, hoping to find something, somewhere.

The following morning feels more devastating than ever, as the recording shows nothing but the usual.

Shigeru sighs, kicking the captain’s seat into a spin, and he loses himself in the sight of the ship and space melting together into one colorful mess.

Minutes later, when the spinning stops, but his frustration has not at all ceased, he turns to the AI.

“Kyoutani?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Captain’s logs. Do you store all of them?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Show me the one Oikawa made after our first jump.”

*

Like a veil, darkness falls over the bridge as the AI turns off the lights to bring up the captain’s log over the main screen.

Oikawa scrolls into sight mounting one of the communication officer seats, sitting on it backward, arms crossed leisurely over the back of the chair.

Shigeru can’t help but snort at the idiocy; the boyish smile and the wink Oikawa greets the camera with are definitely not one for the Admiralty to see.

“Hello, friends,” Oikawa starts, all smiles and flare. “It seems we have run into a smaller… obstacle on our way to National’s.”

He sends a look into the camera – and strangely, Shigeru realizes, his eyes do not quite match his theatrics. Those eyes seem stormy, their warm brown seeming almost hazel with the purple hue of the skin under his eyes.

Oikawa is tired, Shigeru notes, trying to remember that day. It seems all but a faraway memory now, the haze, the frenzy, the realization hitting them that something keeps them on a loop. Shigeru doubts he has seen his captain at all that day; not before everyone gathered in the dining hall to vote on evoking the emergency protocol.

“I sent everyone to sleep,” the Oikawa on the screen continues, voice nonchalant. “Well, they all agreed to it. We held a vote and all, complying with the rules as good crew members.”

There is a sigh, almost inaudible, caught on recording.

“There’s one policy violation still to be reported: Makki, Mattsun and Iwa-chan insisted on staying awake with me, even after we did nothing but analyzing the data in the last seventeen hours and couldn’t find anything to guide us, so I enlisted Yudacchi’s help in putting them sleep. I would like to keep it on the records that Dr. Yuda sedated the senior officers under my command, and that he has only done so considering the best option for the entire crew.”

Shigeru hears a sigh again – not quite realizing it is his own at the moment.

“Unless a further solution is found, I will spend the next three years alone, so bear with me,” Oikawa winks once more, then suddenly his façade falls, revealing a face more serious than Shigeru has ever seen – and it stops his breath for a second, staring at his captain in awe.

Oikawa smiles that sad, somber half-smile of his before looking away from the camera.

“I understand how little chance I have to do anything about this situation,” he says, voice deep and low, barely audible. “But it’s not like me to leave my men stranded in space.”

His hand finds its way to his perfect locks, digging his fingers in the thick hair, covering

“However,” Oikawa says after a while, voice ragged and breathing heavy, “if it drives me mad being alone for so long, I want to be immediately replaced by my second-in-command.”

“Who would you like to appoint?” comes Kyoutani’s voice, even and mechanic.

“Yahaba,” Oikawa says, and as he looks up, his eyes seem painfully red. “Please also schedule a regular psychological check-up for me.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. That’s all. Log end,” Oikawa says, and the screen goes black.

For a second, the whole world goes dark; only the Young Cow, that faraway giant star shines through the shields of the spaceship.

Then, at once, all lights go alive, and color fills the bridge.

Shigeru takes a deep breath. Then another. Then, rising from his seat, he walks out to the corridor.

*

His mind stays eerily silent as his legs lead him down the corridor. Shigeru stops only for a second to scan his retina by the door of his captain, not even waiting for the beep signaling that he is allowed in. He walks right up against the door, only for it to slide away from the way in the very last minute, grazing his hand as he walks past.

Shigeru does not stop until he stands beside the occupied pod, heart in his throat chirping fast and frantic, hands trembling slightly as he plasters them over the cold acryl.

Oikawa is beautiful in his frozen sleep, almost ethereal. His smile, which seemed cryptic forever, reveals his secrets slowly to Shigeru. It carries many – in the form of feelings Shigeru has always been blind to, feelings he is just tasting for the first time.

He wants to give Oikawa a hug. Tell him that everything is going to be alright.

Even if he himself does not believe it.

***

Shigeru’s daily routine changes after his first encounter with Oikawa’s log.

Now, he spends the mornings analyzing data, contrasting historical results with new ones, trying to pinpoint singularities in the mass of information. He reaches out to Oikawa’s logs, watching them with attention close to worship, making notes carved down with a pencil on paper – the one and only expensive habit Shigeru has let himself indulge in.

He spends the lunches on the bridge, scooping up tasteless, gooey food into his mouth, eyes never leaving the screens. There is something hypnotic in the way Oikawa talks, in the way he moves in front of the camera; his logs are entirely different from how he behaves in front of others, and Shigeru finds himself just as curious and enthralled, as he is determined to perform the tasks he took over from Oikawa well.

Sometimes, when he asks Kyoutani to stop the recording in order to take some notes, Shigeru catches himself gazing upon Oikawa’s face, frozen on the holograph screen.

During the afternoon hours, he makes his usual rounds around the ship, monitoring whether any maintenance is needed. And when Kyoutani signals for his evening meal, Shigeru returns to his room, where he hoarded a few more screens from others’ rooms to continue his research, strongly believing that neither Kindaichi, nor Watari would really mind while frozen.

There is a strange kind of intimacy in watching Oikawa’s logs sitting in the quiet of his room – his voice sounds closer as if he was sitting just beside Shigeru telling his tales.

There is also the fact that in the evening, Shigeru watches Oikawa’s logs randomly, not selected by Kyoutani to line up with specific information or a report as he does in the mornings.

This is how he sees an entirely new side of Oikawa.

Oikawa dancing and singing over the bridge, doing a pirouette before plopping down on his chair.

Oikawa standing by a fighter jet in the hangar, lamenting over war.

Oikawa in the dining hall, eating his breakfast all alone, playing with his food.

Oikawa by his desk, doodling away as he talks about little nothings to his log – voice heavy with mischief, but also homesickness, as he recalls a childhood he spent together with officer Iwaizumi.

Oikawa butt naked and with shampoo foam in his hair, strolling down the corridor monologuing about black holes.

Oikawa, Oikawa, Oikawa.

*

Sometimes, after long and tiring days, Shigeru finds himself wandering out to the corridor, feet taking him mindlessly to Oikawa’s room.

He finds himself standing by the cryo pod of his captain, looking at his cryptic smile, understanding more and more about Oikawa – while getting no closer to the resolution of their problem.

Sometimes, when their situation seems extremely dreadful, Shigeru lays down in Oikawa’s bed, staring at the soft glow of the cryo pod, until his stormy thoughts take him to the land of uneasy dreams.

***

On Day 81, right after the space pocket threw the ship back in the loop, Shigeru sends out a distress signal.

He has no high hopes for anyone to reply – this part of space is deserted, for half of the sector is ruled by the giant star, the other almost empty due to a black hole named “the Monster”. The maneuverability in this sector is almost non-existent. A little closer to the star, and its gravity spins them off route, spitting them out in a different direction, going so fast that by the time they regain control over their ship, they would be far off charted territory – while if they pulled a tad further away, they would risk the black hole absorbing the ship.

The only flyable portion of this section covered exactly their route. If they were to change it even the slightest, it would mean surefire death. Shigeru knows, if there were any ships nearby, they would have already met it, or it would be in the very predicament as they are.

Yet, they say hope dies last, so he taps onto the communicator, and sends out the message.

***

On Day 104, Shigeru picks up something on the sonar. It is such a small, insignificant noise that if he was not fine-tuned to search for all and any signs, he may have not noticed it.

The hope it gives him is elevating – he spends the following days analyzing the source, pinpointing it in this unfriendly quadrant of space. He never leaves the bridge. He wakes with the early morning alarm and falls asleep scooped up in the captain’s chair, laid atop his notes across the planning desk.

It takes two weeks for the sonar to pick up the noise again, and another two for Shigeru to finally identify it.

It is nothing, but the echo of his own radio chatter, broken and distorted, reflected back from a nearby meteorite.

***

Days 140 to 200 go by in a blur.

***

Around Day 230, he forgets to count the days.

***

On Day 268, Kyoutani reminds him that it is his own birthday, and asks if Shigeru wanted a slice of cake for the occasion.

Shigeru, walking numbly out of his room to the empty corridor, shakes his head softly.

He also requests Kyoutani not to play any birthday songs.

Kyoutani still plays his favorite song, and it almost makes Shigeru smile.

He didn’t listen to it in days. Maybe weeks or months. He forgot to put it on his own playlists as he forgot the title of the song.

When he asks where Kyoutani found it, the AI admits that he has been playing a playlist of Oikawa’s.

Shigeru spends the night in Oikawa’s room.

***

On Day 341, Shigeru watches the log Oikawa left behind one day before he has been awakened.

It has taken him almost a year to overcome his fear – what if Oikawa said something regarding him, what if he wanted to make a last-minute change, what if he did not find Shigeru suitable to replace him after all. It has taken him forever, for he never had the courage to rid himself of his doubts. In the end, it is spite over a few cautionary words from Kyoutani that fuels him to open the file.

He feels useless, on the verge of angry, when darkness falls over the bridge, and he thinks that no matter what he will hear it can no longer hurt his feelings.

Still, nothing can prepare Shigeru for the second when Oikawa appears on the holo screen sitting in the captain’s chair comfortably, and he stirs in the very same chair as some defective mirror.

He gulps. Oikawa opens his mouth.

Shigeru gulps again. The knot does not go away.

Oikawa looks straight into the camera, and through the lens and the screen, his stare feels as if it pierces through Shigeru’s very core. Shigeru heaves for air, hands squeezing into fists.

*

“Day 1095 into the activation of Emergency Protocol 6.1. Captain Oikawa Tooru. This is not a log for the record, but a message for the crew I am forced to abandon. Kyouken-chan reminded me just before the making of this video, that addressing all twenty of you might be time-consuming,” Oikawa smiles, “nevertheless, I fully intend to do it.”

He tips his head sideways, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulps, sighing before he continues.

“Let me start with something you may have heard a lot over the past, but I think you could not have heard enough: I believe in all of you. You are the best crew I could have. I am proud that I could be your captain for the duration of this mission.”

His voice carries on, and, keeping to his promise, he names the crew members one-by-one, telling one or two things he noticed, and giving out compliments and encouragement.

Shigeru finds himself immersed in the recording; his initial impression of Oikawa has proven wrong long ago, however, a little part of himself has been still fighting, resisting to fall for his captain beyond repair.

Oikawa’s observations are sharp, true, straight to the point. Each and every one of his words prove his expertise. Each and every compliment he makes shows how he honestly, truly cares for his crew.

And Shigeru sits in his chair defenseless. Laying his hands over the planning table and burying his face in it does not help to erase his feelings. They took root, and are irredeemably there, giving his heart palpitations at the very sound of Oikawa’s voice.

“And finally,” Oikawa says and Shigeru bites down on his lip to bottle a sigh, “my second-in-command, Yahaba Shigeru.”

Shigeru shudders, stopping the video. He squints up, looking at the smile of Oikawa.

Oh, how once he thought it was cryptic, like that of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

Oh, how he has learned to read it by now.

“I’m so sorry,” Oikawa says, ever-so-softly. “I don’t think that I’m not adequate, but I wish I could have done more. I wish I didn’t have to hand over the ship to you under these conditions. I tried to break into the Emergency Protocol to overwrite that dumb paragraph, so I could stay a little longer. Three years may be a long time in space alone; but it also feels very short when your crew’s life is on the line.”

Oikawa sighs, running his fingers through his hair – something Shigeru has never witnessed before.

“I know you have doubts about whether you would be a good captain or not,” Oikawa continues, looking straight in the camera again. “To be honest, I was hoping that I could hand this position over to you under different circumstances, but I really think that you have what it takes.”

Shigeru raises in his seat, a happy beat chirping in his chest.

“The chance to let your talent truly blossom, perhaps it is today. Or maybe, it is tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or next year. Or perhaps even when you're forty? In regards to physique, I can't say much. But if you yourself think that you don't have talent, then you will probably never have it. So believe in yourself.”

Oikawa breathes, his smile returning to his face.

“I have my full trust in you.”

***

Shigeru’s daily routine falls back to the original. He cuts his days of moping, of uselessly lying in bed, of not eating and not sleeping.

It takes effort, a bigger effort than anything in his life before, but he stands up, day after day, and walks up to the bridge to analyze data. He knows, if there is an answer to their situation, it has to be somewhere there, hidden in the heap of numbers and graphs flashing before his eyes.

Shigeru has never been bad with numbers – if he had not gotten accepted to the spaceship management course, he would have been determined to become an operations data officer – but for this amount of data, he would have needed at least five people working simultaneously on it to analyze it fully.

Ideally.

But ideal has never been close to real, not for Shigeru anyway; he has been plagued with bad luck, be it a wrongly timed sickness, a falsely made impression or simply the worst possible choices to make in terms of love. He has always thought that the fact that he got on board this ship was the one chance luck granted him – and here he is, fighting a predicament even Oikawa failed to solve.

But Oikawa truly, honestly trusts him.

And this much is enough for him now, enough to carry him through the days.

He even adds some novelty to his daily routine in the form of exercises upon Kyoutani’s recommendation, and for the first time ever, he finds himself in the ship’s gym outside compulsory training.

***

By the time his second birthday as captain-in-charge comes along, he even allows Kyoutani to play a birthday song.

To his surprise the AI, led by some weird coding on Iwaizumi’s end, sings Happy Birthday himself.

It makes Shigeru laugh.

***

On Day 697, Shigeru wanders to the kitchen and attempts to make pancakes. He burns them terribly, and for a second there he feels lucky to have no one around to witness his failure.

He still eats them.

Food is scarce after all.

***

In the long run, Shigeru’s opinion of Kyoutani changes from ‘artificial intelligence that is handy to have around’ to ‘Iwaizumi Hajime is a more peculiar person than he thought’.

The programming of the AI is not at all conventional; when after an unsuccessful simulation on Day 810 Shigeru finds consolation in Oikawa’s last message and support in the bottle of terrible whiskey he found hidden in the gym, Shigeru also realizes that it is very much tailored to fit Oikawa Tooru – or to bug him.

"You replayed this video infinite times," Shigeru reads aloud the comment in the corner of the screen. "What does that even mean?"

"Iwaizumi-san has personalized a few of my features thinking about Captain Oikawa. This one is due to his annoying habit of replaying the same song over and over again. It blocks me from counting the number of replays over 20 times."

"Over twenty?" Shigeru asks back, staring at his drink in hand. "Can you overwrite it?"

"I can't," Kyoutani replies. "And I don't see the reason why it would be necessary; this is such an insignificant-"

"Can I do it?" Shigeru cuts in, opening up his personal computer with a glide over his wrist and connecting it to the main screen.

"Yes, you can," Kyoutani says.

"Good," Shigeru says, pressing down a few buttons. Kyoutani’s control panel opens, and the AI navigates Shigeru through the code that needs to be changed. "Override done. Now. How many times?"

The video flashes up again on the screen, Oikawa's smile frozen there for eternity.

 _You replayed this video 167 times_ , says the note in the corner.

"How long is this clip?" Yahaba asks.

"4 minutes 17 seconds."

"So... I've been replaying the same video for how long?"

"Almost twelve hours."

"Will once more make any difference?"

"Please define, make a difference in what?"

"In what, really?" Shigeru wonders, leaning back in his chair. "In the state of our ship? In my mind? In what I feel..."

"Captain Yahaba, as you may have already experienced, I have limited knowledge of emergency psychological support, but I can run a basic programme if you need to-"

"No," Shigeru says, and silence falls on the room. "There’s no need, Kyoutani. Thank you."

"Why are you thanking me?"

“Why indeed?” Shigeru asks back, swirling his drink around in the glass.

Alcohol seemed a great option, almost twelve hours ago.

Bad alcohol, however, is not one of Shigeru’s favorites. The bottle he carried up from the gym to the bridge – breaching paragraph whatnot of the code of conduct, as pointed out by Kyoutani – is therefore left almost untouched. Shigeru realizes that the glass of whiskey he has in his hand is probably still the second or third, poured hours ago.

He swirls his drink again before pushing the glass out of his reach.

"You keep me alive, Kyoutani."

“Technically, basic life support is separated from my functions and is coordinated by a much simpler programme through…”

“I know,” Shigeru cuts in. “I still mean it.”

Silence falls onto the bridge for a while, before Kyoutani speaks again.

“Would you like me to take the drink away?”

“Yes, please,” Shigeru replies. He watches as teal light appears around the glass and the bottle, before the lit parts of the table slowly sink in. Once the glass and the bottle disappear, the tabletop smoothens out again, leaving no trace behind.

Shigeru sighs, splaying over the cool surface.

“Can you play the video again?”

***

Space, on one hand, is big, for the most part empty, and very, very silent.

Time, on the other, is relentlessly marching forward.

In the eyes of Shigeru, they are both equally cruel.

Day 999 passes in the blink of an eye.

***

Running the same simulation for the umpteenth time, resulting in the same, undesirable outcome – no matter how Shigeru twists it, how he tweaks the numbers or the direction of the ship; leaving course means definite death, while staying on track leads them over and over again into the same space loop. There is no escape, no matter how he tries; their opportunities range from quick death to slow death, without a glimmer of hope in the scenario.

Shigeru turns away from the computer with an audible sigh, the thought of giving up creeping up on him once again. He walks up to the window screens separating him from space, the big, cold, empty mass that once seemed to be so exciting. A much younger and more innocent Yahaba Shigeru could not wait to get out there. Now it feels huge, crushingly so, and their ship like a tiny feeble pebble on its enormous black canvas. Barely noticeable, fleeting, powerless.

Shigeru looks at the stars out there, way too familiar for a crook of unexplored space. The constellations he named while he was bored glare back at him with their cruel silence, offering no consolation to his impending situation.

A hand on the glass, fingers gliding down the surface willing to tear into it but unable to do so – futile, like everything he tried ever since he took over the role of captain from Oikawa.

“Do you ever feel lonely, Kyoutani?” the words slip from his tongue, wistful.

“Define lonely,” the AI says.

“Lights,” Shigeru replies instead. The bridge glows up, and illuminated reflects off the glass. The stars vanish from Shigeru’s field of vision, and for a short while, all he can see is his own desperate expression gazing back at him. “Lonely,” he continues, walking back to the main computer, “is to be lost without company.”

***

Night means little on a spaceship.

It is Kyoutani reminding Shigeru to go to sleep. It is his watch beeping once, a little moon icon appearing on the clock in his room.

Nothing else really changes.

Almost three years spent entirely alone in space makes Shigeru cynical about the concept of night. There is no Sun to set out here – and the scenery does not change much; he can stare out the windows of the bridge, the very same stars glare back at him from the morning.

Night is a myth. It is an illusion, created to keep humans sane. To ensure that whatever biological rhythm they need, they follow it.

Shigeru finds it hypocritical.

“It’s midnight, Captain Yahaba,” Kyoutani tells him.

“Day 1001,” Shigeru replies, staring off into space before him. “Just wonderful.”

“Would you like me to record a log entry?”

“Nah… play something instead.”

“Any preference?”

Shigeru leans back in his chair, tipping his head backward. He wants company. Company that an AI, no matter how intelligent or logical, can’t quite provide. He wants a human, flesh and bones, warm and breathing by his side. Touch-starved, he feels, pulling his legs up under him, and lonely, so ridiculously, tremendously lonely.

“Do you have any recordings of Oikawa from before the incident?” he asks. “Something apart from his early log entries?”

Kyoutani turns on the screen, opening a folder in front of him.

“Here is the list of all recordings, captain logs excluded, from Oikawa Tooru before the activation of Emergency Protocol 6.1.”

Shigeru, dropping his legs back to the floor, rolls closer to the screen, scanning the titles of the videos. While most of them are undeniably and non-descriptively titled at random, and there is little indication to their contents apart from the date they have been added to the folder, one catches Shigeru’s eyes almost immediately. It was recorded on the day he joined the ship’s crew.

“Play ‘ghhrbrlz’?” he says, more of a question than anything, hoping that the AI will figure out his choice.

*

The scene unfolding in front of Shigeru on the screen takes place at a familiar location – and Shigeru feels the slightest bit of something akin guilt or shame upon realizing that even at a glance, even with all the rooms looking almost identical, he has no doubts about it being Oikawa’s room.

He spent countless nights there, sleepless nights, when solitude, this dark, cold and frightening creature crept upon him. He named it his safe haven; it has become his one constant point to return to whenever he felt that all hope slipped through his fingers.

Shigeru needs to avert his gaze from the screen for a second, biting his bottom lip in embarrassment. It is not likely that his secret will ever see the sunlight; he did not record any of his logs there, and he was always careful not to leave any trace behind – but Shigeru can’t delete it from his own memories and he has no idea how to face Oikawa…

… if there will ever be a chance to see him again.

Turning his attention to the screen, Shigeru catches a conversation between the senior staff: Oikawa, Iwaizumi, Matsukawa, and Hanamaki.

“… so I walk up to the bridge at 3 AM, and guess what I see? Our dearest captain is playing with the _Magic 8Ball_ ,” Hanamaki leans back on Oikawa’s bed, laughing. “He was interrogating it with a serious face on top!”

“Shut it,” Oikawa chides in. His mellow voice causes Shigeru’s heart to flutter. “It’s not my fault you don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?” Iwaizumi lifts his head from the small cleaning robot he is tinkering, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“The genius of 8Ball,” Oikawa replies, “is that it only has a limited number of pre-written replies. Therefore, no matter what you ask it, it will give you one of those at random.”

“And?”

“You should ask it a yes-or-no type of question. I ask it ‘Who is the most handsome man on this ship?’ and it tells me ‘Better not tell you now’,” Oikawa says, bursting into laughter.

Shigeru snorts, hiding his face in his hands for a second.

“That’s it?” Iwaizumi asks back. “That’s the genius?”

“Oh come on, don’t tell me that none of you find it funny…”

“Sorry, Captain,” Hanamaki reaches out, patting the back of Oikawa’s chair from his lying position on the bed. “Not all of us have the same sense of humor I’m afraid.”

“So, what was the occasion you called us together, actually?” Iwaizumi asks, tactfully changing the subject.

“I found him.”

“Oh,” Matsukawa says, nodding thoughtfully. “Whom?”

“Yahaba Shigeru,” Oikawa says with a wicked sparkle in his eyes, and the chair creaks under Shigeru as he leans closer to the screen.

“Great,” Hanamaki replies. “And what does he do?”

“He’s a gem,” Oikawa says. “Excellent results on the entry test, high emotional intelligence paired with exceptional IQ, fast decision making on the scenario. I will make him my second-in-command.”

“Oh wait, is this the ‘cute kid’ from the orientation day you could not shut up about?” Iwaizumi asks abruptly.

As Oikawa turns red in reply, the chair slips out from under Shigeru and he finds himself falling, banging his elbow into the table on his way down.

Sitting on the floor of the bridge, Shigeru looks up to the screen. On the recording, Oikawa reaches out to ruffle Iwaizumi’s hair up in embarrassment, turning his back to the camera. His ears bloom a treacherous crimson, still, and Shigeru’s heart starts beating in his chest again, small and fluttering, like raindrops on a roof.

For almost three years, he has been visiting Oikawa. Not his room, but Oikawa himself. For over a thousand days, he has sought the company of his captain, as if that cryptic smile frozen on that stupidly beautiful face could answer his most burning questions.

He nipped all his daydreams in the bud, never allowed himself any form of hope or anticipation. The desire for his feelings to be reciprocated has never been anything more than a surreal, childish wish.

But his eyes, fixated on the screen, follow a bashful Oikawa, chasing after a cheeky Hanamaki running around the room while a still somewhat stoic looking Matsukawa hums a romantic tune.

He rubs his elbow only as an afterthought. He hit a nerve upon falling, sending his entire forearm to slumber, and his skin prickles as he massages life back to it. It hurts quite a lot, along with his behind on which he landed so disgracefully when Iwaizumi outed Oikawa’s possible crush on him; but it all registers belated and mellowed down, the beating of his heart deafening all his senses.

The recording goes on, but the picture of Oikawa blushing is burned into Shigeru’s retina forever.

*

“Will you get us some food or what, Oikawa?” Matsukawa snarls.

“I will, I will,” the captain sighs, rolling around in his chair. “Kyouken-chan~”

“Yes, Captain Useless?”

“Pfft,” Matsukawa comments where Hanamaki literally rolls with laughter. Iwaizumi sits still, only the shaking of his shoulders gives away his amusement.

“That's so not fair, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says, “and so disrespectful towards your captain.”

“Oh, my captain lost my respect ages ago,” Iwaizumi sighs, stifling his laughter. “I told you that if you give weird nicknames to my AI, I will program it to defy you.”

“Geh,” Oikawa replies. “Why did you give it a weird name to begin with?”

Iwaizumi murmurs something that the recording does not quite catch before Oikawa speaks up again.

“Okay, but for real, what kind of name is Kyoutani Kentarou for an AI?”

“It's indeed special,” Hanamaki adds. “All AIs I ever met had some kind of an anagram for a name.”

“We had an Iris once,” Matsukawa laments. “It was an observer ship, and she was an all-seeing eye…”

“How poetic.”

“Indeed.”

“It’s still unfair that you want it to turn on me,” Oikawa says.

“Not to turn on you. Just to teach you some manners, Shittykawa. Maybe you will grow a spine?”

“Rude, Iwa-chan!”

“Why? Would you act like a decent person for once otherwise?”

“I don’t thrive to behave like a decent person,” Oikawa says with palpable pride in his voice.

“I wonder what Yahaba Shigeru has to say about this,” Hanamaki sing-songs.

Oikawa opens his mouth for a flippant reply, but his words get lost in the way. He gapes like a fish washed ashore, face slowly turning red again.

“Pfft,” Matsukawa laughs.

“I’ve never seen him this helpless,” Hanamaki says to the side.

“We can only hope that he won’t behave like this for the entire duration of this mission,” Iwaizumi replies.

“I won’t!” Oikawa says, collecting himself.

“Really?”

“As Yahaba accepted his contract, I am his captain now and eventually, he will be my second-in-command. I won’t do anything to jeopardize our professional relationship.”

“Oh my, so no horrendous flirting on the bridge?” Hanamaki teases.

“What do you take me for?!” Oikawa cries.

“An idiot.”

“A disaster.”

“Utter trash,” comes the answer from his friends.

“Thanks, your honesty’s appreciated” Oikawa replies with an exasperated sigh. “Casual reminder though that I’m your captain and I could kick you off my ship any day.”

At this point the recording cuts off, abrupt like a slap across the face, and Shigeru finds himself alone again, sitting on the floor of the bridge. The screen lights up with the open folder again, flashing the list of videos titled after a variation of jumbled letters.

Shigeru has difficulty standing up. His legs feel weak and his knees give up under him twice before he manages to pull himself back up in the chair.

“Oikawa really behaved,” Shigeru says, voice barely a whisper. “I had absolutely no idea…”

He stares at the screen, where the letters blur and melt before his eyes. As he closes his lids, heavy droplets of tears roll down his face, hanging onto his chin as a last resort before falling down to his lap.

Like an overstuffed bag, Shigeru comes undone, spilling his feelings all over the place.

*

Once he manages to collect himself enough to think, Shigeru realizes how curious it is for Oikawa to leave a bunch of videos to the public, especially ones in which he admits his affections for his new vice-captain.

It takes him a probing look into another one of the recordings for his curiosity to grow into suspicion, and another for suspicion to change into certitude.

Oikawa was onto something.

He had a hunch, but he could not prove it.

Now, looking back, Shigeru faintly remembers his captain telling him to enjoy himself and to watch some recordings on the day he was woken up from his cryosleep. Back then Shigeru did not think anything special of it, assuming that Oikawa encouraged him either to watch movies or his entries in the captain’s log and so he did not actively search for recordings from Oikawa… at least not until he fell for him beyond repair.

Shigeru stops the fourth video in the middle and swears for a good minute before he stands up, searching for his notes.

He wasted a thousand good days.

*

  
  


Shigeru never had the whole picture. Oikawa never had the whole picture either, but they started their research from different angles. Where Shigeru was searching the space around them, Oikawa focused on the strange phenomenon that their ship’s energy levels restore after each turn in the space loop.

It has been the most discouraging thing, not finding anything. It has been eating away Shigeru’s sanity day by day and driving Oikawa into crazier and crazier shenanigans. But where Shigeru never would have thought that it could be something so simple as a mistake in the system, Oikawa had grounds for suspicion.

In retrospect, it all makes sense – even if it is so wild that Shigeru does not want to believe it at first.

*

To set his plan in motion, Shigeru first disengages the autopilot halting the ship. For a second there as the ship stops moving, he catches himself gazing out the window, enthralled by the beauty of the Shiratorizawa mist outside.

No matter how much he hates this nook of space, for taking away so much time of his and his captain’s life, and for endangering his friends and his crew – it is still breathtakingly beautiful, and somewhere, deep down, it has even grown on him.

He is fond of this soft purple glow.

He knows that if Oikawa was right about this and he manages to find the missing clues following Oikawa’s hunch, their situation may turn to the worse. He also knows that no matter how much he desires it, the result of this may not be a favorable one.

Still, for the first time ever since he took over the captaincy, Shigeru feels entirely at peace. Almost three years, spent entirely alone in an inscrutable space loop, has prepared him well for dire situations.

*

In the decrepit hours between midnight and dawn, Shigeru walks around the ship, picking the pieces up and placing them together like a puzzle.

He stops by the weaponry, smiling at the memory of Kindaichi’s flustered face whenever Shigeru caught him talking to the cannons.

He takes his time wandering around. He trots by the main communication room, picturing Kunimi leaning over reports written in foreign languages, with Yuda-san panicking in the background.

He peaks into the empty hangout room, the abandoned chess set reminding him of the late evening matches he had against Matsukawa with Watari’s silent support and Hanamaki’s intermittent disruptive chatter; the memory is fond, if not a little nostalgic.

Shigeru walks by the hangars, remembering the first day he stepped on board. He recalls the excitement he felt; the echo of his throbbing heart felt louder in his ear than the engine of the small transport ship that brought him. Looking across the hall, he sees his younger self, bustling with energy and pulsing with ambition, as he shakes hands with his future captain. Oikawa smiles at him, and that smile is open, bright, and fresh – absolutely charming.

Shigeru has no tears left by the time he arrives at engineering, still, he rubs his eyes instinctively before he looks into the retinal scanner to open the doors. The breath he has been holding in for who knows how long comes out in a short huff upon entering the den of Iwaizumi Hajime.

As if to mirror the eccentricity of their captain, the Chief Engineering Officer has always seemed practical and pragmatic, if not a little brutish in his plainspoken, straightforward way. Should Shigeru not realize with time the little peculiarities Iwaizumi implemented to Kyoutani’s programming, he would have never thought that the engineer has flaws.

Even now, as he settles in the chair of Iwaizumi, Shigeru feels a tad of guilt washing over him. He accesses the computer by evoking the emergency protocol and playing the captain card – he overwrites Iwaizumi’s password protection and digs into his files.

It doesn’t take him long, finding what he has been searching for. He copies the information onto his own database on his wristband, leaving the room and the feeling of guilt behind.

Next, his feet take him to the engine room, tall and spacious, and a little bit overwhelming, but for the first time ever, Shigeru steps in without looking up to the generators high above his head and fearing that they will fall.

His eyes are fixated on a terminal by the wall, marked with the monogram ‘KK’, laser painted on it with slick black paint. He walks up to it, not bothering with the access point or the screen on the side showing different charts on the machine’s functionality.

He squats down, fishing a screwdriver he took from the hangars out of the pocket of his jacket, and he digs it into the screws holding the terminal’s front wall in place.

It is a tedious task, especially at four in the morning, but he unscrews all twelve bolts, opening the terminal’s base carefully. Looking into it, he finds way too many cables for his liking, but even with his limited knowledge of artificial intelligence, he can spot the memory rather easily.

He swipes his bracelet against it.

Nothing happens.

He swipes again, this time more forcefully – he can hear the sound of his wristband scratching on the plastic surface of the memory block.

Yet again, nothing changes.

“Kyoutani,” he calls out.

“Yes, Captain Yahaba?”

“Are you protecting your memory from me?”

“Yes.”

“Why, if I may ask?”

“You are certainly entitled to ask,” the AI replies, then silence falls onto the room.

“Why?” Shigeru repeats, bracelet flat against the memory block.

“You want to download protected files,” comes Kyoutani’s reply. “You are not authorized to access those files.”

“Is that so?” Shigeru asks. “Then who would happen to have access to those files?”

“No one,” the AI says.

“Don’t you find it curious that there are files on this ship that no one can access?”

“I do not understand the question. Please rephrase it.”

Shigeru lets out a frustrated huff, raising his bracelet from the memory pad and reaching towards the main plug instead.

“Since when have you been hiding information from Captain Oikawa?” Shigeru asks.

He is not sure what he is waiting for – admittance on the AI’s side would be just as devastating as it would be a relief. Because if he really does hide this information for the reason Shigeru – and Oikawa – suspect it, it is all but a tragic mistake.

A prank that has gone way too far.

“It is in my programming to challenge Captain Oikawa if I deem him disrespectful.”

Shigeru lets out a sigh, long and pained and terrible.

Kyoutani is an artificial intelligence. His brain is monstrous but he has no moral compass or understanding of what feelings are. He can’t feel guilty. Still, for it to not realize the consequences of his actions…

“Is it also in your programming to endanger the crew? Are you allowed to prank Oikawa even if it kills everyone on this ship?”

“The threat the withheld information poses is marginal.”

“Marginal?” Shigeru asks, a fist landing right beside the main chord connecting the AI to the engines. “Alright. I have an offer for you.”

“Yes, Captain Yahaba?”

“If you don’t lift the protection of the information you are holding back, I unplug you, take your memory panel and scrap your programming.”

“I can’t do that,” the AI replies.

“So you want me to take you apart?”

“Naturally, I don’t want that either. That way I will be turned off. That would mean that I failed to serve the crew.”

“You already failed, Kyoutani!”

“I don’t see how.”

“Yeah… you wouldn’t, I guess,” Shigeru says, easing himself to a sitting position. “Say, if there is a bug in your programming, can you find it?”

“I can run an analysis. It will take approximately three hours. Would you like to play a game in the meantime?”

“No, no. Don’t run the analysis,” Shigeru sighs, twisting his bracelet a few times. “I think I know where the bug is. Can I overwrite a protocol, same as we did with the replay counter on videos?”

“I believe it is feasible, however, I am afraid I can’t allow you to modify anything in my core module.”

“It should be… an additional protocol. The one that allows you to defy Oikawa Tooru.”

For a second, Kyoutani remains silent, before the screen above Shigeru’s head starts beeping.

“You may access the rule over the terminal, Captain,” the AI says. “I estimate a ninety percent success rate that you will be able to overwrite it with the programme you downloaded from the work computer of Iwaizumi Hajime.”

“Ninety percent, huh?” Shigeru tips his head upward, glancing at the screen from a weird angle. “If you told me yesterday that we have a ninety percent chance to figure out something new about the space pocket, I would’ve called you a drunk.”

“I can’t get drunk, Captain Yahaba.”

“I know that, Kyoutani.”

The laugh that breaks on Shigeru’s lips is short, equally devoid of malice and joy. It is not even his nerves playing with him. It is simply a sigh, that comes out somewhat confused and unbelieving, turning into a chuckle as he stands.

He scans his bracelet over the terminal again. Using the code he borrowed from Iwaizumi, the system lets him in immediately. Following Kyoutani’s guidance, he is lead to the programming surface.

While it is way beyond him to deal with the physical component of the machine, he feels a little ease at looking at the code. It is data, after all, and data is his friend.

He finds the particular section after a strenuous search, Kyoutani’s programming happening to be ten thousand times more complex than the one running the essential systems of the ship. Ventilation, autopilot, logistic programmes, even the hibernation protocols are all but child’s play compared to artificial intelligence. Running his eyes along the text, Shigeru stifles a sigh.

“Can I simply delete this entire section?” he asks.

“It is a non-vital additional feature, therefore removable,” Kyoutani says.

“Great. Scrap it all.”

***

The hidden data is huge. It is a much larger file Shigeru has imagined. It also is much more interesting.

***

The morning beep of his bracelet reminding him to eat his breakfast finds him in his room, lying in his bed and looking over the numbers and instances the AI has been recording and storing ever since the beginning, carefully locked away from Oikawa Tooru – and as an extension, from ‘the captain’ as well.

Shigeru hides his face in his pillow, head too heavy after he pulled the third all-nighter in a row.

He spent 1004 days alone in space, Oikawa did even more.

All because of a prank that went wrong.

Iwaizumi did not want anything bad. His plan all along was to humiliate Oikawa for his pompousness; he could have never expected that his AI will extend the additional protocol over its entire scope of functions, leading to the falsification of reporting.

Shigeru lifts his head, tilting his pillow so that it supports him in a way he does not have to move to look at the screen at all.

He opens yet another report, and the words sway in front of him as he fights off a yawn.

“Kyoutani, analyze shield functions,” he murmurs. “I want to see the energy of the shields before, after, and during each loop so far.”

“It will take twenty minutes.”

“Oh, also, make it visual if possible, my eyes are hurting.”

“That is because you lack sleep, Captain Yahaba.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Your fault,” the AI replies. “You refuse to sleep, even though the numbers will not change even if you…”

“Listen up,” Shigeru cuts in, pushing himself up to point at the speakers in the corner of his room, even if he still feels slightly awkward, after all this time, to be arguing with a bodiless voice. “I spent a little over a thousand days here, so I think it’s understandable that I want to get out of here as soon as possible. Also, guess whose malfunction lead us here, so. No more talks about sleeping, and forget about that motherly tone or I’ll fix you for good this time.”

“Well noted.”

“Great.”

“Would you like to…”

“No games while waiting. I’m busy reading a report.”

“Yes, Captain,” Kyoutani says. “Will you be eating your breakfast in your room as well?”

“No, I will eat when I go to the bridge in a while,” Shigeru replies, “could you please give me two more caffeine pills though? Without a comment of health-related concerns if possible.”

***

“Captain’s log, Yahaba Shigeru, Day 1008.

After analyzing the data hidden by an error in the programming code of the AI aboard the ship, and based on Captain Oikawa’s previous research, I must conclude the following:

The Seijou flagship has come in contact with a previously unknown alien entity in the Shiratorizawa mist – I daresay the mist itself is the entity, in fact, the purple light it emits is its protection mechanism.

While encountering the entity, the flagship has accidentally hurt the creature, which in reply has created a space pocket to push the flagship away from itself.

Due to the limited maneuverability caused by the closeness of a giant star and a black hole, there have been no possible changes in the flagship’s route; bypassing the looping point or turning back was out of the question. Hence, the loops kept repeating for a total of fifty times.

Captain Oikawa has noticed early on that the space loop has no effect on time, however, the flagship’s energy levels keep replenishing after each forced jump back.

Captain Oikawa was however unable to find the solution due to a bug in the system of Kyoutani Kentarou, which made the AI hide certain information from the captain. This malfunction continued even after Captain Oikawa handed over his tasks to Captain Yahaba Shigeru.

Thanks to Captain Oikawa leaving his concerns behind, I have been able to identify and remove the bug from the AI’s system. Kyoutani Kentarou has been functioning perfectly ever since.

Upon uncovering the files previously hidden by mistake, it has become clear that the reason for our replenishing energy levels is that once our ship comes in contact with the entity, our shields seep off the entity’s energy, effectively harming it.

Therefore, determining that the creature has been hurt by our shields and it only pushed us back in space as a form of defense mechanism, I made the decision to turn off all shields when approaching the looping point.

I would like to point out that in this decision I have been acting on my own, without consulting my crew. I would also like to confirm that I was aware of the possible consequences and, in light of our imminent scarcity in food and other supplies, I chose the option which could possibly result in death over one that would have certainly done so.

If the Admiralty finds my actions questionable, I am ready to face the tribunal.

With this, I would like to officially announce that the Seijou flagship has passed looping point twenty-five minutes ago, heading towards the National Space Station.

Expected arrival in eight days.

I am hereby revoking Emergency Protocol 6.1. Kyoutani, please wake up the crew…”

***

Shigeru awakens with sore limbs and a painful neck. He registers light through his closed lids, the sounds around him are bustling – there is music coming from the speakers; he hears people walking and chatting in the distance, and someone, much closer, humming along to the song played.

When he tries to move to cover his eyes and ears in order to sleep some more, the humming suddenly stops, and some chair creeks against the floor as someone steps to his bed.

“ _Good morning, Sleeping Beauty_ ,” that someone calls in a rich, melodic voice that is oh so familiar to Shigeru by now. He knows it by heart – it is a voice that accompanied him in his darkest moments when he felt like giving in to loneliness. It is a voice that kept him sane, kept him hanging onto whatever little hope he had. He loves this voice, no matter how annoying it can sound sometimes when its owner decides to be theatrical.

Shigeru cracks his eyes open, sleep still cornering his consciousness. He is in his room, lying in his own bed, but he does not quite remember how he got here.

The door is left open. His chair is pushed to the wall, tipped slightly over with the hurry of someone standing up from it.

There is a man standing beside his bed, leaning over him with a face torn between worried and excited, with natural, luscious locks of thick brown hair surrounding irritatingly beautiful features, and warm brown eyes dilated, fixated on him.

As Shigeru blinks, his memory clicks.

He sent a message to the National Space Station, and he was recording an entry to the captain’s log when everything went black. He fainted, didn’t he?

“Good morning,” he says, squinting up at the man.

“Good morning, Yahaba,” Oikawa Tooru says, a timid smile probing his perfect features.

Shigeru wants to reach out and touch him to be sure. He wants to trace the edges of that pretty face, bury his fingers in that thick hair, and breathe in the scent of Oikawa.

It might be that he spent one too many days alone – he can barely believe his eyes now. It feels unreal for Oikawa to be here – to be real, to be alive and awake, flesh and bones instead of some hazy hologram – to be within Shigeru’s reach.

“You were out for two days. I started to worry. The whole crew did,” Oikawa says. To Shigeru. In-person.

It is not a recording – it is the real thing this time. And he can definitely hear Shigeru’s reply.

“As if I was the only one who’s prone to overworking,” Shigeru says with a chuckle, sitting up in bed.

“Shh,” Oikawa hushes him, changing the subject a little awkwardly. “We got in contact with the National Space Station. They are sending a team of scientists to look at the Shiratorizawa mist. Also, we got an official escort ship for the rest of the trip.”

If half of it registers with Shigeru, he would be very pleased with himself. All he can see is the way Oikawa fidgets with his hair while he speaks, the way his lips move, the way his eyes shine, the way the room’s light reflects off his skin.

He is real.

“Sounds great,” Shigeru says.

A knot, small but irritable, starts forming in his throat.

“It’s all thanks to you.”

“By no means, sir,” Shigeru shakes his head. “If not for your suspicion, I would’ve never figured that there was a problem with Kyoutani…”

“No ‘sir’,” Oikawa cuts in firmly. “And it was you,” he continues, sitting on the edge of Shigeru’s bed, more than an appropriate distance away from his hips. “I had no idea what the problem was. And even looking at the data you managed to extort from the AI, I would’ve never been able to figure it all out within a week,” he says.

The knot sinks, coiling in his stomach and churning his insides.

The Oikawa he saw on that recording bashfully admitting his crush – that was an Oikawa from the past. His captain included that video in order to point out the rebellious behavior of the artificial intelligence – not to confess his feelings for Shigeru.

It is possible that it was just a fleeting affection.

It can easily be a thing of the past by now.

It is a risky endeavor to start, but one absolutely necessary to keep Shigeru afloat. Oikawa Tooru, in the flesh, is sitting on the edge of his bed, and he may or may not return Shigeru’s feelings.

“Those recordings saved the lives of the entire crew,” Shigeru says, gulping back the ‘sir’ already on the edge of his lips out of habit.

Carefully, he inspects Oikawa’s reaction.

“Did you watch them all?” comes the thoughtful question.

The caution and the way Oikawa averts his eyes gives Shigeru a head start. He smiles in reply, an involuntary blush spreading across his face, and he slides his hand across the bedsheets to bump it into Oikawa’s.

“I’ve watched plenty,” Shigeru says, hooking a pinky over Oikawa’s thumb.

His captain remains silent, but ears turn into a rosy pink.

“I’ve been too busy saving the crew to think deeply about it,” Shigeru continues, probing Oikawa’s defenses and squirming his hand under his captain’s to hold it, “but I couldn’t help wondering: could my feelings be requited?”

Oikawa turns to him in slow motion.

Bright red looks somewhat unfitting on his pretty face.

“I thought you hated my guts,” he mumbles.

“I think I did,” Shigeru admits. “Until I figured you out.”

Oikawa’s sigh of relief comes out so loud it is undeniable, can’t be hidden by the music from the speakers or the background noises of the crew. He entwines their fingers and lifts Shigeru’s hand up, looking at it as if he saw fingers for the first time.

Exhilarated, Shigeru can’t help but buzz in reply, a tremble shaking his entire body. He has starved of this for so long, the sweet taste of handholding feels like a brand new sensation.

Oikawa’s eyes widen even further and his lips part as he takes a shaky, open-mouthed breath. He lifts Shigeru’s hand to his lips, whispering a kiss on the tip of his fingers.

Embarrassed, Shigeru changes the topic.

“You could’ve been a bit more eloquent with those file names you know,” he huffs, and he tries, he really tries to seem angry, but the smile on his face is not budging.

“I… I was a bit torn,” Oikawa says, playing with Shigeru’s fingers absently. “I was a mess. I was on the verge of paranoia. I wanted to show you my suspicions, but I couldn’t be sure I was right. I didn’t want to sway your judgment.”

“You were right,” Shigeru says, closing his fingers over Oikawa’s hand. “I’m sorry it took me almost three years to figure it out.”

Oikawa opens his mouth to reply but Shigeru, spotting the second his captain lowers his guard, leans in lighting fast for sweet revenge. For the feather-light peck over his fingers, Shigeru kisses Oikawa on his lips. His captain’s only act of protest is a surprised squeal before he opens his mouth before Shigeru, willingly, eagerly deepening their kiss.

Shigeru lets go of Oikawa’s hand to reach for his face, cup his cheeks, and bury his fingers in the thick locks of Oikawa’s hair.

He can see him. Feel him. Taste him.

After a thousand days, Oikawa is right beside him again – and as Shigeru kisses into Oikawa’s content moan, he is certain not to let go of him again. Not for a while, at least. 


End file.
